from New York it's the cube covering blockchain week now here's John furry hello everyone welcome back to this special cube exclusive on the water coverage of the awesome cryptocurrency event going on this week blockchain week New York City D central Anthony do re oh seven a big special event launching some great killer products me up to cube alumni that we introduced at polycon 2018 Genevieve Dec Monroe and Jeromy Gartner great to see you guys thanks for having us so you guys look fabulous you look beautiful you're smart we're on a boat we're partying it feels like Prague it feels like prom feels like we are at the top of another bubble couldn't feel better five more boat parties and then the bubbles officially at the top but we're only had the first boat party well the real existential question is what do we view next you know we've we've graduated from nightclubs and strip clubs and now two super yachts like do we go on a spaceship neck's or a Boeing Jets yeah I mean the options are somewhat limited in how we scale up the crypto parties I actually heard today one of my clients is launching in space a crypto mining operation that's fueled by solar power so we might be going to space Elon Musk wants to get involved I agree like where are we going you guys are awesome I love the creative so this party to me is really a testament of the community talk about the community I see polycon was great in Puerto Rico they had restart week and that but I heard these guys saying here at the central that the community's fragmented is the community fragmented seems like it's not out there or just only one pocket of the community I think the community so we have 10,000 people at consensus okay so these are 10,000 people that have gone down the rabbit hole and they're all at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan kind of going like how'd you get involved why are you here 10,000 people is a lot but I think that yeah we're we're at the decentral party so some of the yeast communities are being fragmented but I think we're having like infrastructure built to kind of connect the broader world to the things whether it's custodial services whether it's like tonight the jocks 2.0 wallet and you know everything that's getting involved there I don't know Jeremy Jeremy it's like an international traveler so you Carly Jeremy it's 100 percent in an echo chamber more importantly rabbit holes are like dark and confusing places that there are they're winding and a lot of people are here for very different reasons and thus when you have all these new entrants to the industry to this technology here for all these different reasons of course you have some fragmentation you know in many regards the ideological and philosophical roots of Bitcoin and blotchy technology have been lost son on many of the new entrants and and so it takes time to get to the point where we're all winding I think different blockchains and different applications of this technology will have different kind of approaches to how people think about investors always gonna be pragma because this is a massively growing industry that touches upon every kind of business and governmental and non-governmental it's actually fragmentation is a relative chairman is Genevieve you I saw you and you guys are working with things from cannabis coin I think you had to cannabis cabin this week in New Yorker yeah we're doing that tomorrow night actually so crypto and cannabis are two the hottest millennial sectors right and so we kind of like to say Agri capital we like to dance on the edge of chaos I actually found out about a cannabis company in Vancouver so just outside Vancouver that is using a crypto mining operation and all the excess heat that is coming off that to power a grow-op so we're literally at the intersection of crypto and cannabis not just for our handling money but handling energy in a different way which is so fast that's real mission impact investing right there you know using energy to grow weed that's the Seidel impact isn't it good bad I mean even as you look at it you know better cannabis healthy cannabis is a mission people look care about we're helping people's wallets and we're helping people's minds right in like ways that the government banks and pharmaceutical companies are fighting against so you know if you can't beat them join them so I welcome Astra Zeneca and the Bank of Canada to come on board our mission this is specially turning into a cube after dark episode Jeremy I gotta get your thoughts on these industries because look at cannabis we joke about it but that's an example of another market this zilean markets that are coming online that are gonna be impacted so fragmentation is a relative terms but hey look at it I mean energy tech is infrastructure tech and solid that's what I'm concerned about who nails the infrastructure for network effects and what's the instrumentation for that that's the number one question that is essential question for the protocols whether it's Theory amore Bitcoin oreos Definity so forth the protocol that provides the strongest and and most adaptable and infrastructure and foundational technology is going to be one of the main ones are those will be the main winners and so the names I mentioned they're up there they're very competitive but it's anybody's game right now I think any blockchain can come along right now and be the winner a decade from now and for entrepreneurs represents a challenge because you have to figure out what blocks came to go build on this is why I am big on investing in interoperable Ledger's technologies that enable the kind of transfer smart contracts and crypto assets between blockchains it's a great great segue let's just get an update since we last talked what are you working on what are you investing in what's new in your world share the update on strangers so now my fund is officially launched where how much we launched with just over 15 million dollars and amazingly we launched at the perfect time we're already up 55% and we got making an investment for a venture fund we actually did the exact WA T investment which transferred over from my personal investment portfolio but doing great I have really run the gamut in terms of investments we're making on the equity side of things and in crypto assets but what we're seeing is really accomplished entrepreneurs coming to this space continue actually more optimism than I had felt at polygon poly car and I was like this market needs to correct in a real way today I think that Corrections been prolonged if we were gonna feel a lot of pain it was gonna be two months ago but instead I think it's gonna be one to three years before the market goes through the correction that we need to see for the real shakeout to happen because so many of these teams that I think are garbage have so much money yeah and they're just floating around they got has worked their way out it's just like a bad burrito at some point it's got a pass Genevieve what are you working on I'll see you've got grit capital what's the update on your end what's new yeah amazing actually literally tonight probably about 60 minutes ago my business partner and I signed one of the fastest-growing exchanges in Canada called Einstein exchanges of quiet so these guys have only ever raised like one and a half million u.s. and they're the biggest exchange in Canada by sign ups active accounts so they're probably doing like almost a hundred million in top-line transaction volumes and they're probably never going public somebody's probably gonna buy them but we're gonna be marketing them across the country getting customers I mean the tagline is it doesn't take I'm Stein to open an account it shouldn't take n Stein it by Bitcoin you can literally get this account set up in under 60 seconds so they're vampires ease-of-use surety reducing the steps it takes to do it and get it up and running fast absolutely like my dad could do it and like alright so we say now follow you on Instagram and Facebook which is phenomenal by the way I got a great lifestyle what's the coolest thing you've done since we last talked to Polycom Wow polycon was kind of a high really peaked and then everyone got sick like our team got said polymath untraceable cuz everybody just got the flu yeah we were like on adrenaline and we kept going ah what's the coolest thing that we've done since then I think it's signing up like cool companies like Einstein we also signed a big cannabis company in Colombia called Chiron they're about to go public I don't know Cole what do you think I don't know maybe what's the coolest thing you've done travel what's your good so last night Jeremy and I just met we're together on a blockchain Research Institute project that Sonova Financial is backing and meeting him so you guys working together on a special project right now how's that going what's that about JCO which is a new sort of financial services firm they're creating what it could effectively be understood as a compliant coin offering that is available to more than just accredited investors and that's they're making ico something that falls within the pre-existing regulatory framework and also accessible to your average Joe which I think it's really important if we're going to follow the initial vision for both blockchain technology and offerings all right final question I know you guys want to get back to your dancing and schmoozing networking doing big deals having fun what is blockchain New York we call about we could pop chain we here in New York what the hell's happening there's been a lot of events what's your guy's assessment of you observed and saw anything can you share for the people who didn't make it to New York or not online reading all the action what's happened so as someone that did not attend consensus spoke at three other events or speaking at three other events I can say with certainty that the New York box chain week has been about bringing together virtually everyone in the industry to connect and kind of catch up with one another which is really important we we don't have that many events Miami was too short the industry's gotten too big but having a full week of activities in New York City has enabled me to kind of foster relationships are oh I yeah man get a lot of work John well I've gotten so much work done I haven't had to actually be a date conferences to reconnect with just about everyone that I want to industry that's really special Genevieve what is your observation what have you observed share some in anecdote some insight on what happened this week I know fluid he started I saw Bilt's I was just chatting with him about it it was started in over the weekend it's gone up and we're now into Thursday tomorrow coming up well I don't think it's a coincidence that Goldman Sachs came out today and said that they were launching some sort of digital currency marketing yeah exactly using the power of the 10,000 people i consensus but yeah i know i agree with what jeremy says it's not really about being at consensus it's about what happens like behind closed doors it's all these decentralized parties that are happening yeah open doors but like it's you know like we hosted a core capital asset we had a hundred people in a suite at the dream hotel and it was just like you put the biggest CEOs of the mining companies in the world together and like put those with investors in a room it's like you know 100 people and that's where the deals happen it's not like in the big you know huge auditorium where like nobody looks at each other and everyone's on their phone well I gotta tell you how do we know we the Entrepreneurship side is booming so I totally love the entrepreneurial side check check check access to capital new kinds of business model stuff economics so we reported on all that to me the big story is Wall Street in New York City has been kind of stuck the products kind of like our old is antiquated like the financial products and like that's why Goldman's coming out they got nothing what they don't have anything what are they got so you see in a stagnant they got a traditional product approximately nothing really like new fresh so you got in comes crypto just do a crypto washer so I think I see the New York crowd going this is something that is exciting and we could product ties potentially so I don't think they know yet what that is but I think some of the things that are going on you guys I like I like so I my dad's always the kind of barometer to this whole thing and he's like when are they gonna come out with like a Salesforce stock column for the blockchain right like some sort of application that it doesn't matter if you're like illegal if you're like in investment banking like some sort of pervasive application that just goes wild you have that yet what is that happening Jeremy Jeremy did the date was it's the Netscape moment if you will the moment that blotching technology becomes tangible and now and in retrospect a few years out we may decide that's great for all the young browsers is a browser the original browse for the Internet that was that moment may have already happened we don't really know it maybe it been something like a theory a more augered you know something where there's a use case but people haven't wrapped their heads around it yet but if that hasn't happened yet it's coming it's where we're on the cusp of it because people know what bitcoin is they've heard of the blockchain it is part of the zeitgeist now and and that cultural relevance it's so important for having that Netscape moment Jeremy Jeremy thanks so much to spend the time here on the ground on the water for our special cube coverage of blockchain week new york city consensus you had all kinds of different events you had the crypto house where we were at tons of fluidity conference all this stuff going on good to see you guys you look great thanks for sharing the update here and the cube special coverage I'm John Faria thanks for watching Thanks

(upbeat music) >> Live from Nassau in the Bahamas, it's theCUBE Covering Polycon '18. Brought to you by Polymath >> Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's exclusive live coverage here in the Bahamas for Polycon '18, put on by Polymath and Grit Capital. I'm here with the CEO of both of those companies, who have been gracious enough to let us come in and tap into the bandwidth, tap into the guests, and host us here at theCUBE's two days of exclusive coverage. We have great guests, Trevor Koverko, CEO of Polymath, really changing the game. Security tokens are really kind of driving great, fast, accelerated innovation. And we have Genevieve Roch-Decter who's a CEO of Grit Capital, funding it, being part of it. You guys created a great community. Welcome to theCUBE! >> Great, thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> So, live coverage, thank you very much. We really appreciate the collaboration with you guys, great guests. But there's something magical going on here. You've got a big even, couple hundred, 400 people. But it feels like the early days of, when I was in my 20s, the computer revolution, PC, and then the internet came. People are doing deals. This is a very intimate conference, you've got whales, billionaires, you've got entrepreneurs, you've got folks from investment banking companies coming into the sector, young guns, all dudes and gals. I mean, This is a melting pot! >> We have professional athletes, too, yeah, no we've really brought together a cluster of different zones, if you will. I come from the world of the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street, Bay Street, and so we've got institutional investors here who don't have wallets don't have coins, and are learning about it from the top Crypto minds in the world, so it's quite magical. I don't think Trevor and I have slept in 60 days. We literally came up with this idea, it's supposed to be a very intimate setting of 20 or 30 people and it's ballooned into 600, mostly because Trevor has so many friends and is partnering up with a lot of them on his projects, so yeah it's been a great time so far. >> And Trevor you, by the way, you're not sleeping 'cause everyone's staying out til two in the morning. It's been a great intimate gathering, people are mingling. But they're players, they're not pretenders here. This is a really interesting group, people who are investing their time, it's mission-driven here. We talk about societal change, but there's money-making going on, too, you're powering that, I mean you've got to be exhausted, how do you feel? >> I call it the eye of the hurricane, this was like if you weren't here this week, in crypto, you're just not relevant, this is where you wanted to be. And it's all about the attendees, the caliber of the people that came just blew me away, very humbled by the quality of people that we had here, it's no surprise, we have a beautiful venue like here in the Bahamas, and at Baha Mar, and amazing people. Good things are going to happen. >> Community is a very important formula for success in this world, we've seen this movie before, in open-source software It started out as a tier-2 citizen, now it runs softwares tier-1 class capabilities, cloud computing has been amazing growth, crypto, same model, you know, it's emerged as the money, the value store, technology-enablement. What are you guys seeing as the pattern, 'cause honestly, people recognize that certainly in the in industry. If you don't you're going to miss the boat on this one. Most people who don't get it will probably miss the boat. But a lot of people are getting in, what is the pattern that's happening, why is this moving so fast? Is it the wealth creation, is it the money-making? Is it the technology enablement, what's you guys' reaction to the why? What's the why, here? >> I think it's a convergence of a lot of mega-trends going on right now, both of the technology and on the regulatory side. If you look at, you know, the exciting sexiness of having this liquid tokens that kind of feel like stocks, but are also utilities in the sense that you can use them to do certain things with, that's a big component of it. But I think another reason is just, there's a lot of strangling going on in the capital markets, where you have a lot less companies going public, you have a lot more barriers to raise capital, in a lot of ways. And this is kind of like, light peeking through the hole. Where you have new ways re-imagined ways to raise capital. So we're seeing just a convergence of a lot of mega-trends, I think. >> And a lot of pros are coming in, and they're either young pros that are learning and growing with this trend, the young guns, I call them, and then you've got pros coming in from other industries, whether it's banking, and other sectors, this is interesting. So the question I have for you, is the security token. This has been a big deal, a lot of companies have seen the ICOs on the utility side, certainly the SEC in the US has been really sending signals pretty radically, like hey, don't pump and dump, I don't want to see any, watch that advisor stuff, and oh by the way, show me the utility, how we test et cetera, et cetera. That the startups who have to build the future are trying to rush a utility token out, now have a safe harbor in the security token, and existing companies can raise money with the security token that are tokenizing a real business, this is a pretty important point. Can you guys share some color commentary on that? Do you agree with it, and then, if you do, share some color around this whole trend. >> Yeah, I mean, right now if you look today, there's two major categories of tokens as you alluded to, you have utilities on the one hand, and securities on the other hand. And the distribution right now is extremely one-sided. Security tokens are dominated by utilities. Utilities like Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, they make up 99% of the total market cap of alt coins, so, where does that leave us? Well it depends, today it means all the action is in utilities, there's more upside, they're faster, they're simpler, I'm very bullish on utilities. But what's even more exciting to me, is the mega-trend the tsunami of real-world financial assets migrating to the blockchain. And that's what I see as the next sort of part two, second-wave of crypto, is real-world, tangible assets tokenizing and migrating to the blockchain. >> And you know what I think, you know the SEC kind of gets a bad rap in all this, but the rules are there for a certain reason: to protect investors, and I think that this industry is in the beginning it's a nascent, and you know, with Trevor's company Polymath introducing the securities token. Literally, I think you coined the word. It's growing up, it's an industry that has to, you know, it's going to have some red tape, too, right, and I think working with the regulators, and Trevor's company has done that, you know, befriend them, and be open-source about it, and communal. And, you know there's certain aspects about the regulations that are not good, and we don't want communication and the communities that have formed, Telegram's a great example of this, so there's a lot of these chat rooms that I'm in and literally people are sharing information about companies and teaching each other, and learning and that's great. But there is an assymetry of information sharing, that at some point, you know, we have to rein that in. But we don't want to lose the positive aspects. >> You could choke the innovation, if you put too much regulatory on it, the innovation won't grow, so you have to have a balance, I mean, that's what you're saying, right? You got to get through it, but redefine a new era. And the SEC in the US has not been too bad, I think they're just sending a signal, and I think they're not, And they can be hardcore. They could be harder core, I think, than they are. But thank God they're not, you want to let these startups figure out what to do. Alright so I got to talk about liquidity and funding. So, Grit Capital, you guys are involved in investments also, you're enabling partnerships at Polymath. A lot of people you're connecting into your system, we had one on earlier. The funding environment, certainly a lot of investors are here I talked to probably at least a dozen actively investing, different profile make-ups some go hardcore protocol under the hood, some are more business we're going to decentralize apps. Make-up, Persona, trends, can you share? >> Yeah! >> You know that world. Eight months ago, so, I'm from Toronto, I'm from Canada. Eight months ago, there was literally no publicly-traded blockchain company in Canada. And now there's probably, I think, 70, you know, new one every day, name change. But yeah, there's been a lot of equity raised. There's two companies about to go public actually, in Canada Hut 8 Mining, who's our sponsor here at the conference, and Galaxy Digital Michael Novogratz's company, and I think between the two of them, they've raised almost half a billion dollars in capital. Or, like market capitalization when they go public. Probably about 250 million in actual capital. But that's huge, those checks were written not by just by high net worth people, but actual institutions. And those people that are here today, they're good with writing equity checks, ICO checks and that is going to come. And I think the securities token aspect of it will give them a lot of comfort that they can write checks in those kinds of-- >> And how does Grit Capital, talk about Grit Capital. >> Yeah so very simply, we introduce companies to capital holders, investors. So I was a portfolio manager for nine years, and I like to say I was in the no game for nine years, 'cause when you're portfolio managing-- >> Now you're in the yes game! >> Yeah, your goal-tending, you're like trying not to let bad deals in, and that wasn't really conducive to my personality and now I'm in the yes game, I'm you know, I like this company, I'm going to invest in it, but I'm going to introduce them to these other capital holders. And it's a positive experience. >> How much is community involved in what you do? 'cause we're seeing obviously the pattern of kind of paying it forward, which is great culture, but also people are, you know help scratch my back, I'll scratch your back on deal flow, and also on participation, it seems to be a big part of the current rules of engagement, or implied protocol. Is that going on? >> Yeah, you know, look I think this is a very collaborative ecosystem, and It's has to be because by definition, open-source communities are powered by the people that make it up, and it's all about volunteering, about helping, about giving back, and it's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this space. >> I think you should probably talk about your fund that you just announced that you're launching. And it probably plays into, so Trevor's network is global, it's extensive he has deal-flow coming at him all the time. >> Alright, so what's in the news? >> Yeah what are going to do with that deal flow? You holding news back? >> Yeah, I've got a bit of a brain freeze, I have so many announcements out there, uh, yeah we're doing a lot of exciting initiatives right now, and part of what I'm excited about, and also slightly intimidated by, is that there's just so much opportunity, there's so many key components of this new infrastructure that need to get build, that aren't in existence yet, that is easy to get, you know, carried away. But for me it's about prioritizing and finding out the real kind of high-leverage initiatives that are going to help us achieve our goals. >> And so you're putting a fund together to invest in the ecosystem, or is this for financial investment, is it a crypto fund, or what are you, what's going on? >> One of those initiatives is a securities token focused venture fund, this will be the first one that I know of that exists, and it would be to help our ecosystem get financed, and that's a big component of this marketplace is capital, is investors, is demand. And we just want to channel all of that to the best deals. So Polymath capital-- >> Ecosystem is important to you guys, Polymath your ecosystem is strategic, right? >> Yes. >> How do you see that playing out, what's your vision? What do you hope to unfold in your ecosystem? Obviously, people connect in the variety of things that you can help people with, and vice versa. How do you see your ecosystem rolling out? >> Well, part of it is I want an arms length organization that has its own kind of mandate, its own charter. And the way I look at it is, if you look at Ethereum, which I am very familiar with being from Toronto and knowing those guys kind of since day one. They opted not to do a venture fund, but if they had, it would have been literally the most, >> John: high performance fund ever in history? >> Of all time, yeah, just mathematically-speaking, so we don't want to lose out on an opportunity like that. And in the process of building another potentially profitable entity we want to also seed the ecosystem and help projects that we're excited about. Get the first check. >> Who are you looking for in your ecosystem? Is it developers, 'cause obviously Ethereum, we're Ethereum developed we're a ERC20 token, we love it. It's easy to work with, smart contracts are easy to work with, so it's clearly a developer market on that side, are you guys looking for the same? Is it a different kind of partner, what is some of the partner makeup that you hope to attract, in case they're watching now, why should they work with you, who are they? Describe the persona of your ideal ecosystem partners, or partner. >> For better or worse we have a lot of verticals that we have to build communities within, so those are the business community, we want leaders, we want action-takers we want people that can structure deals, we want legal professionals, that's a big component of the security token landscape, is the regulation is the exemptions, and the offerings, and the memorandums, and all the legal stuff, so we need a legal community. And then finally, most importantly, we need a developer for community, we need the best technical minds just like any other decentralized project, so that's what my full-time job is, when people ask me, is building communities with our broader community. >> Well I can totally give you props, one, because I know you're super busy, and you're drinking from the fire hose at all levels, and certainly the event's been great. I think a breath of fresh air, a sigh of relief from the world when see entrepreneurs, at least from the perspective of the entrepreneurs and the markets is that security tokens, finally someone just made a decision let's just use this security token as a way to get the funding and get set up, and not foreclose the option for, say, a utility token. Why rush and force a utility, needs to be built out. And lot of these utilities have really missed out because they had to run so fast to write code funded by a utility, that has a test. So I think you guys are doing a great service, I want to give you props for that. >> Thank you, yeah I would whole-heartedly agree, I think a lot of these so-called utility coins are actually securities masquerading as utilities, and you know, >> I think that's the game everyone kind of is realizing like, okay great, now you have the platform, so what's the update on the platform, the company? Take a quick minute to explain to the folks about Polymath. >> We are inundated and overwhelmed with demand right now. And we have thousands, tens of thousands of sign-ups on both the investor and issuer side. And kind of my goal right now on a day-to-day basis is to scale our on-boarding process so we can take all these issuers and give them a secure and robust token that they can fundraise on top of. And we are in the process of unveiling our application layer that's going to make that kind of self-serve process exciting and scalable. >> Well congratulations, and Grit Capital, genevieve, thanks for connecting, great to connect with you. Shout out to Bill Tai who made it happen. If it wasn't for Bill Tai and Genevieve, theCUBE would not be here, and of course Polymath supporting us as well. It's been great, so thank you very much! >> Thank you! >> Great event, and we'll keep on following you guys and thanks for coming on, sharing success. Final question: The craziest thing that's happened here this week, one, two, three, things that might have won? Craziest thing that's happened, could be good, bad, or ugly. Did someone fall in the pool? Was someone found on the beach? Share a funny story or two. >> We found a mermaid. >> there was a mermaid, yeah. >> A real, live mermaid, we actually found a mermaid. And we put her in the pool for the cocktail event. >> And we almost put Trevor in the pool as a merman. Just to balance it out. >> Merman, We're a mermaid-neutral company we have mermen as well, oh geez, what else? We had uh, a friend of our decided to get the jacuzzi suite at the top floor and uh, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Scarface? But there was a lot of uh, opulence going on, which was a little more than I bargained for. And then Genevieve being the celebrity that she is. Umm, what do you think? >> Umm, I mean there's been so much, like, we've had literally 13 side-events within the conference. So drinking from a fire hose is an understatement, I would say, there's still more to do, we're going to Cabana pool party now so maybe, I think there's going to be a bull there, a stampede security bull there? >> Trevor: Oh geez, is there? >> And maybe the SEC, no! (laughs) >> Well, hey congratulations, you guys are doing a great service in the industry and I love how you brought together the inner-circle major players, really the community really admires that so appreciate your help. Okay this is theCUBE, live coverage in the Bahamas. More interviews after this short break, stay with us. (upbeat music)